I finally figured out what to do with my iPad. I download films I have not seen before – yet should have seen – because they did not have enough air time. In 2008 the film Inheritance aired on POV on the Public Broadcasting Service. I don’t know how I could have missed it. But the iPad has made it possible to both learn about the film and then obtain it.
Now I want to recommend it to you. It is one of the most spellbinding documentaries I have ever seen (and that says a lot). It is the story of the 60 plus-year-old daughter of the sadistic Nazi concentration camp commandant, Amon Goeth, who was brought vividly and horrifically to life by Ray Fiennes in Schindler’s List. What appeared at first to be a cinematic exaggeration of inhumanity was entirely true.
The film is the story of Monika Hertwig, who was shielded as a child from knowing who her father really was, and Helen Jonas, who was introduced as Helen Hirsch in the Spielberg film, as the Jewish girl taken under Goeth’s wing (albeit cruelly) as a house servant. After all these many decades, Monika meets Helen on the site of the Plaszow camp. The rest is incredibly moving.
Purchase the film here. Listen to a Helen Jonas podcast here.
